Need to generate more QUALIFIED leads? Here are 9 ways you can go about it.

Need to generate more QUALIFIED leads? Here are 9 ways you can go about it.

Not too long ago, I had a chat with someone whose business wasn’t doing well because he was creating “too many leads” that’s right; TOO MANY LEADS!He was receiving an average of fifty sales enquiries every week and was only able to close one out of the fifty and that didn’t bring in enough funds to pay bills or even sustain the business. If he had less leads, say 10, he’d have had more time to pay attention to each sales opportunity and possibly close 3 or 4 of them and this would have brought in more income.

However, let’s remain focused on the reason for this article: LEAD GENERATION.Driving Revenue And Profit Is The Essence Of Lead Generation It is worthwhile to measure and optimise lead volume if your sole purpose of doing this is getting new clients, more revenue and consequently more profit. However, if you will generate leads for inbound sales, you will have to drive qualified leads and make the most of the value of your sales people’s resources and time.

The following 9 strategies will help you in achieving your goal:

1. Be Able To Identify A Qualified Lead When You See It

The entire members of your organisation need to recognise what resembles a qualified lead. The understanding must be there and it shouldn’t be complicated. Below are some of the definitions you can make use of:

Final decision maker in a private company with annual revenue of $1 to $10 million.
An annual budget of $50K – $600K for digital marketing.

• Business has been operating for over a year.

• Has an established process for lead-and-sales – not e-commerce.

• Determined to take the plunge in the next three months.

• Pleasant to deal with – not arrogant, bombastic or rude.

Knowing all these in the early sales process isn’t always easy however, they can serve as a very useful guide and can ensure people continue to focuse on the end result.

2. Craft Unique Value Proposition That Is Effective

A compelling Unique Value Proposition is the core of marketing and the marketing process should start with qualified lead generation.The UVP term is one that is very commonly misunderstood however, it simply means that unique alluring idea that makes you standout from the other competitors.The UVP is crafted using a technique known as Conversion Kaleidoscope. The fact that UVPs can convince prospects on why they can and should choose you is the major reason UVP is highly important. They help you eliminate majority of the competition even before sales begin. They also go a long way in setting you up for a much focused discussion with a potential client.

Below are some of the SMEs that are getting it right:

Direct SMS is an SMS business which provides mostly SME client base enterprise level support and features without them having to put themselves through the costly account management and bloated overhead structure that most of their competitors offer.

Trilogy Funding is set as “The Property Investor’s Mortgage Broker”. As a property investor, you may get good results speaking to a generalist; however, you will get better results speaking to Trilogy.How’s your UVP?A simple and effective way to find out is to peruse your website and ask yourself: what makes us standout from other alternatives available and is it obvious at first glance?

3. Entice Your Leads With Education-Based Marketing BEFORE Speaking With Them

This is important.

Educating prospects about the details of what makes you standout can be really challenging and time consuming, especially if it is a high-ticket or complex commodity. This is when you can bring in marketing automation; lead nurturing and opt-in marketing. This technique adds great value to you in the eyes of your prospects. They also enable the prospect do some research; select you as their choice even before they contact you.

We extensively employ the education-based marketing with our customers. These are some examples:SMSF Property Capital pre-educates prospects on their business model with the help of reports and other strategies for lead nurturing free of charge and this is done before the initiation of the initial sales conversation.

Technoledge, which is an expert technology-marketing agency, has published The Australian Technology Marketing Blueprint, which contains unique techniques to assist the high-tech companies – with $5 million revenue or more – to succeed in very competitive markets.

4. Invite Prospective Clients Into Your Frame

“Framing” is a model that originates from Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). Framing in this context refers to the act of getting the prospect to view their problem and solution through a perspective that will promote your sale.

How can you achieve this?

An amazing approach will be to create a unique framework or language that you own in the prospect’s mind. The Conversion Kaleidoscope mentioned earlier is a perfect example. This framework was created with the aim of creating a UVP that can entice and convert the most profitable clients in the market. I really hope you start thinking in terms of this language and framework because I’m sure you’ll find it useful.

Continuing the discussion with us is the next logical move. This is because it won’t make any sense to call a different company to ask for you Conversion Kaleidoscope.
The Blueprint for Sales Lead Machine is another model we use for generating and positioning sales funnels capable of driving consistent and steady pipeline of ideal clients.
A prospect that has gone through this framework and understood it is more likely to do business with us than a prospect that hasn’t. This is because we will most likely be on similar wavelengths if the prospect read it and still went on to contact us.

5. Create “Little Hurdles” For The Potential Client To Overcome

Making prospects overcome obstacles before they can purchase from you is a very effective way of creating highly qualified leads. The big ticket coaching sales is a perfect example, where you are required to submit application for the program. The application process is designed to make prospects convince themselves that they really want what they are applying for. You could also charge an application fee, initial consultation fee or diagnostic fee before they are allowed access to you.

Anybody who pays any of this is surely a qualified prospect because with that payment – no matter how small – has shown a commitment. Flaming hoops as a concept is hard to successfully pull off. ‘Successful’ here is a keyword. Creating flaming hoops that nobody wants to get involved with is quite easy; it’s just a waste of flaming hoop propane gas. For flaming hoops to work effectively, you need an “ecosystem” of marketing tools surrounding your flame hoop offers.

6. Be In Control Of Perceived Demand And Supply

During the early 2000’s when I still resided in Japan, I took a day trip to Nagasaki. Nagasaki, like every other region there had a special local delicacy, which they made theirs, and Nagasaki had the Castella sponge cakes. It was like every third shop in the tourist region was a Castella shop. There was a particular shop that had quite a number of punters waiting for the opening time and although there were many other shops, I was intrigued by this one.

Well, it was 9 am and this shop opened. Customers filed in and began selecting different cakes, mostly in dozens and paying relatively more expensive rates and walking out. By the time it was 10:45 am, the shop put up the sold out sign at the door and that was it. I made some research and discovered that the shop was popular for Castella cakes however, beyond that, they made it widely known that they only make 800 units of cake per day and that was why people had to come early to buy, not minding the extra price.

It isn’t compulsory that you must sell this product or any other product for that matter before you can make use of this technique. Service providers can also make use of this technique. As expected, a service provider has limited team and capacity and as such, you can make it known that there is a restriction on the capacity of clients you serve at a time.
You will have better control of the sales process if you can control supposed demand and supply.
7. Let Your Audience Know Who You DON’T Work With

You can serve 2 purposes by informing your audience who isn’t fit to receive your product r services. These reasons are:It helps you filter out those who you do not want to help from your sales pipeline, leaving enough room for the people you want.Creating a “This is for me” feeling makes those you want to help feel special – like your service is tailored to them and their needs.

8. Reveal Prices Beforehand

Some marketers are scared of being more expensive than their competitors and for this reason, they are reluctant to reveal their product price. While some others think it is wiser to talk value before talking price. Either way, I think it is better to disclose the price in the lead generation phase because of the following reasons:

Price communicates with your prospects. It is a smart indicator of the scope and level of solution you are offering and also filters the prospects based on those who see you as being within reach.You have the opportunity to discuss value and let the prospect become accustomed to your pricing and this is useful particularly when your price is significantly higher than that of other alternatives.

Your sales conversion can be a lot more about “mutual fit” and less about bickering over price if you can disclose price and value. The sales cycle is significantly shortened if the prospect already has an idea of the amount they need to invest. They will then evaluate their finances and decide if they think it is worth it to part with such an amount for your product or service and if they go on to contact you, it means they can afford you.

You shouldn’t see premium pricing as an issue. Your aim should be the relationship and how you can make the process of doing business with you great. For instance, it is highly unlikely that a person who has a one-day goal owning a $500K Ferrari. The $500k investment is a known portion of the transaction, which is capable of propelling the efforts needed to afford the purchase. This same concept is applicable to the not so big brands. It is not easy but it remains very possible.

9. Keep Precise Tracks Of Where Your Most Qualified Leads Are Generated

Conversion tracking has become a lot more popular in recent times. Marketers are becoming more conscious of the significance of knowing what is working and what is not.
“Cost per lead (CPL)” remains a very popular success metric however, it may be better to track the “Cost per qualified lead (CPQL)”.A consulting firm that we serve observed that some keywords generated an extraordinary volume of leads for the services at a low cost. Notwithstanding, their sales remained the same.

The moment we altered our focus from CPL to CPQL, we observed that the so called “low cost” keywords were actually about five times more costly than those qualified on the basis of CPQL. They were driving but they were driving a lot of rubbish.Qualify… But Be Careful Not To OVER-Qualify Leads
The 9 techniques enumerated above are quite helpful in improving the conversion rate and the quality of the inbound sales leads however, we must remain focused on the main goal: to maximise sales.

There is a possibility that we can over-qualify leads a little too quickly in the sales process and thus, this could lead to fewer sales. I recall a time when a prospect called and asked us to help fix their landing page that isn’t correctly displaying. I’m sure the person that answered the call must have been tempted to tell the prospect that we do not handle projects that small but she did well enough to observe that the initial enquiry was a little too small; however, the company in question matched our definition of qualified lead. In the end, I had a chat with the management and convinced them that they had a lot more problems that had to be looked into. In less than 6 months, we got business worth $56,000 from the same company.

That is where we pull the curtain. You must have a clear definition of who you can and can’t help and build your marketing process around this definition. This way, with less effort, you can get maximum results.